Review Author(s): Roy Wagner Review by: Roy Wagner Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Oct., 1978), pp. 267-269 Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3317183 Accessed: 07-04-2016 12:02 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Anthropological Quarterly This content downloaded from 193.52.23.12 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 12:02:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOOK REVIEWS 267 a ritual of reaffirmation of the brotherhood four authors undertake the extension of of all miners regardless of ethnic classifica- the idea of total institution to broader tion. Co-Editor Brett Williams undertakes areas. David Lark attempts to demonstrate the complex task of showing a consistency the applicability of the model to American of relationships between inmates and non- slums, David Rosen considers colonialism inmates in a migratory labor setting. He as a total institution, and Richard Basham discusses the honoring of the individual in ambitiously depicts ethnicity in general as an institutional setting, privacy within a form of institutionalization. In all three cramped and necessarily public areas, and cases the arguments are tentative and not. the creation of a social unit from a diverse completely convincing. M. Estelle Smith's selection of people through ritual celebra- article on the strengths and weaknesses of tions which obviate the deadening routine the model in relation to maritime life and of the camp. lifestyles is the most cogently argued of the Part III, "From the Anvil of Exper- set. ience", offers two articles by "inmates" of Smith also provides the best summation total institutions. Bob Blankmann presents of the volume itself when she states that a masterly portrait of the SAC contingent "the ability of any model resides not in its stationed on Guam during the Vietnam ability to give a Procrustean bed for others War. His portrayal of Air Force Personnel to sleep in but in its potential to spark as inmates in a total institution is thorough, inquiry, controversy, dialogue-and convincing, and pervaded by a fine and hypotheses which, even when negated, pro- subtle sense of humor. Celia Sardenberg duce new data and further lines of inquiry" and Deborah Donnellan sympathetically (p. 156). Exploring Total Institutions is a but sketchily outline the institutional step in this direction; and, whether the aspects of a college sorority. reader agrees or disagrees with the individ- Perhaps the weakest section of the book ual presentations, the volume is valuable is the fourth and final part, "Extending precisely because of its variety and enthus- the Model and Metaphor." In this section iasm. The Second Ring of Power. CARLOS CASTANEDA. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977, 316 pages, $9.95 (cloth). Reviewed by ROY WAGNER University of Virginia Carlos Castaneda's books have generally take the author's claims and qualifications been marketed under the heading of "non- at face value, for what I can learn from fiction," and the author holds a Ph.D. in them. anthropology. The demystification of his The present volume is the fifth in a books has made the fortune of some, and sequence documenting Castaneda's experi- for many others it has rescued the improb- ences as an initiate into the psychic world able realities of modern secular life from of a Yaqui shaman known here as Don the doubts that bedevil the good soldiers of Juan Matus, and his Mazatec co-practition- science. But, if sorcery and knowledge are er, Don Genaro Flores. Each successive a deadly game, I find that of verification a addition to the sequence represents a deadly boring one, and in this review I shall significant shift or "turning" of the dialec- This content downloaded from 193.52.23.12 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 12:02:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 268 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY tic between an increasingly self-aware second ring of power-the ability to "hold author and his increasingly sophisticated an image" of the nagual. and enigmatic mentors. The search of a Like Castaneda's second book, A Separ- young man, originally mystified by the ate Reality, which also begins at a point of secrets of hallucinagenic plants, for the doubt and confusion, The Second Ring of sources of shamanistic power and know- Power offers some tantalizing details of the ledge, culminates, in the fourth volume, sorcerer's world, and also, like the earlier Tales ofPower, in the exquisite "sorcerer's work, it goes beyond the immediate an- explanation" and the author's leap from a thropologist-informant dyad. Women, we cliff into the abyss of the unknown, the learn, have an intrinsic capacity for the un- "crack between the worlds." focused attention that is the key to power; The Second Ring of Power takes up the at menstruation the "crack between the inquiry from the familiar anthropological worlds" stands open before them. And we dilemma of the fieldworker who has just learn of the "emptying" of adults by child- been shown the ultimate mystery and is ren (who "take their edge"), hindering searching frantically for an informant who their completion as sorcerers, and of the will explain just what he has seen. Don "mold of man," a kind of Platonic univers- Juan and Don Genaro are unavailable, hav- al of human essence with dazzling eyes, ing detotalized their powers among their occasionally sighted near watercourses by disciples and executed each a personal de- people who think they have seen God. nouement into the nagual, the eternal un- It also becomes apparent, though much knowable. The final deposition is an event, more inferentially, that Castaneda simply wholly consistent with "the sorcerer's does not operate on the same communica- world": Castaneda and five hitherto unsus- tional wavelength as his ethnic Mexican pected female protegis of Don Juan are confreres. Continual hazing by Don Genaro "set up" in a series of deadly sorcerer's and others for his inveterate habit of note- contests designed to allow one or another taking and fastidious questioning, as well as to recoup the faculties of their mentor. exasperated admissions that "you're so Thus the book begins with high adven- dumb" by Don Juan (Journey to Ixtlan) ture; almost killed in a grotesquely trans- and his proteg s (the present work), suggest parent seduction and murder attempt (the a discrepancy more serious than the usual most insidious sorcerers seem remarkably "anthropologist-shock" (and the author of opaque to cultural difference), Castaneda Tales of Power is by no means a stupid comes to know the uncertain, suspicious, man). "Knowledge," for the warriors of and temperamental young women who Don Juan's circle, is communicated share Don Juan's tutelage. In a world over- through performative symbols; it is elicited flowing with incongruous and ingenuous nonverbally, rather than being articulated, ethnic apparitions, haunted by the specter often via a strange ballet folklorico of of the limited good, he finds a trustworthy mind-body gymnastics, and the witness is informant in La Gorda, the most adept pro- expected to work out the details for him- tege, and a foil in the self-indulgent "Gen- self. It is likely that a Carlos Castaneda who aros," the three young men who shared had grown up intellectually amid such a Don Genaro as a principal confidant. culture of the self-revealing symbol would Eventually the "power" discourse is resum- have been spared the contempt of his asso- ed: dreaming (the facility taught by Genaro ciates, and even that he might have entered to Don Juan's disciples) and the art of the the nagual by now; it is highly unlikely, stalker (taught by Don Juan to the Gen- however, that he would have written a aros) are revealed as techniques to grasp the word about it. This content downloaded from 193.52.23.12 on Thu, 07 Apr 2016 12:02:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOOK REVIEWS 269 Finally, we are permitted some surmises ally nothing to lose. Pablito, the whole- regarding the qualifications of a warrior. some peasant boy who is Castaneda's "part- Virtually without exception, the "success- ner," is finally the captive of real second ful" sorcerers in this book are "no-hopers," thoughts about sorcery, and plays at socially degraded or outcast people rescued machismo. Carlos Castaneda, the educated by Don Juan and Don Genaro from critical student from Los Angeles with his note- situations. They are people who can face books and his tricky questions, returned the prospect of death, or jump off a cliff, from the nagual to write a book about it. with equanimity, for they have quite liter- The Irish Tinkers: The Urbanization of an Itinerant People. GEORGE GMELCH. Menlo Park, California: Cummings, 1977; iv, 176 pages, index, $3.95 (paper). Reviewed by LARRY TAYLOR Lafayette College Anyone who has travelled in Ireland will tin utensils. But itinerants were also impor- have noticed the typically ramshackle and tant in the provision of other essential debris-strewn encampments most often economic services including horse trading, found on the edge of rural towns.